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Oct 21, 2010

White Liquid in a bottle comes from the Cow in a field

By Gautam Sharma

Is it just me, or are football analogy’s becoming increasingly bizarre? First Rafa rants about bottles of white liquid earlier this week, and then Sir Alex stares at cows in a field... what is going on?! Am I the only one who misses "intellectual prostitution"?

I was as confused as any other Inter fan, or Liverpool fan for that matter, by the “Milk in a Bottle” speech Rafa dished out earlier this week. What in the hell was that about? I can only hazard a guess that Rafa was taking a shot at the previous owners of Liverpool, but surely he could have articulated that better than this:

"White liquid in a bottle. If I see John the milkman in the Wirral, where I was living, with this bottle, I'd say, 'It's milk, sure.'" – Rafael Benitez

You can’t blame the baffled journalists for wondering what that was all about. Some particularly investigative journalists seem to have taken it quite literally and embarked on the rather fruitful journey to find “John the milkman in the Wirral”. Possibly in the hope that the magical answer lay within the white liquid John served (no pun intended). And tracked him down, they did! Liverpool fan John, whose semi-skimmed milk is now the talk of Europe, tried to throw some light:

“He (Benitez) was a very good customer. He had just the three bottles of semi-skimmed. They didn’t have to be placed zonally on his step or anything. ” – John the Milkman in the Wirral

Enlightening. Luckily for Inter, the milk didn’t turn sour yesterday, even though they almost bottled it near the end. Sorry, couldn’t resist that!

Lets leave Rafa and his bottled white liquid for now, and move to greener pastures as Sir Alex Ferguson used analogy to articulate why his most prized asset wants away:

"Sometimes you look in a field and you see a cow and you think it's a better cow than the one you've got in the field" – Sir Alex Ferguson

That had me a bit confused. I mean, Rooney is probably the kind of person who always wants a better cow. We get that, his recent sexual indiscretions were hint enough. But what’s that got to do with his future at Old Trafford? Luckily for me, the not-so-chivalrous Knight was not finished with his analogy:

"It's a fact, right, and it never really works out that way. It's probably the same cow and it's not as good as your own cow” – Sir Alex Ferguson

Yeah, that explains everything??? But surely even Rooney can differentiate whether its the same cow or not? And why would a Knight of the Great British Empire think of cows to explain attraction in the first place? Surely, the lure of Real Madrid, the greatest club in the history of football, demands a better or rather more appropriate analogy than a cow?

And perhaps Sir Alex needs to stop staring at other people’s cows that way. Its not right.

Luckily, not all coaches are like that – case in point, Jose Mourinho. Like him or hate him, he never spoke about cows or their white liquid. When he speaks, everyone knows what he means. Rafa's bottles of white liquid made me wistfully reflect on one of his predecessors speeches from the same seat (a must read), against possible double standards of Italian media:

"I don't like intellectual prostitution, I like honesty. The rest depends on your jugdement. However, it seems to me that in the last few days there has been great intellectual manipulation, a great job done to change public opinion, and for me this is a fantastic operation for a world that is not mine. I don't know whether these people pay to be interviewed. I know that they offer me money for interviews and I refuse because I don't manipulate reality... But they don't talk about Milan being 11 points behind, they don't talk about Roma with the best midfield in Italy that will end the season with zero titles, they don't talk about Juve, who have won so many points thanks to refereeing mistakes. They don't talk about anyone. Who do they talk about? About Balotelli, who starts his move outside the area, gets behind two or three players. It was a penalty. Thanks. See you tomorrow." – Jose Mourinho

Now thats how its done. And he said all that to their faces. Its almost like he looked at each journalist in the eye, and said:

“You are all Whores. You, and you, and you, and YOU. W-H-O-R-E-S. Thank you & Fuck you.”